..to avoid being Medusa's victimsAino Johansson

10-25.12.2014

"Was found from page 36, line 4.The Bird-dress and Oil-skin-hut - installation, re-arranged and remixed, with something old and something new. New digestion. My main material, waste. Waste, waste of time. In finnish, the word waste - 'jäte' derives from the verb 'jättää' – to abandon, or to leave behind.What's left of it then. Aura's around objects, materials, and moments, and the moment when they loose their meaning, when the magic's gone, when it becomes useless, waste. Material, being waste, burden, golden and intimate all at the same time, depending how you experience time. It was a journey, and journeys followed. In to the methods of collecting I drew inspiration from the roots of shamanism in Finland, from east and north, and combined them with my sort of dada-situationist approach making rules and schemes for my self. Excavations into the city and the groves followed, and I collected these objects and materials, specific things on specific days, and in the end, mainly metal and plastic. I often came across abandoned camps of castaways.

But Medusa. Page 36. ”It makes us understand that if artists manage to avoid being Medusas victims, it is because they reflect her, even while being transubstantions of her blood.” Referring to 'a secret genealogy between the power of the gorgons and aesthetic experience' she continues: 'The Medusa myth already prefigures an aesthetic of incarnation.' "

Aino Johansson (b.1984) is a multidisciplinary visual artist working with installation, painting, photography, video, and sculpture. She uses various materials, combining waste and valuables in an anti-hierarchial way.

She deals with the human condition and present time through fragmentary notions or disorder and altered states of mind.

She has studied her BA in the Fine Art institute of Lahti, and is currently studying the MA in Fine Arts at the Aalto University of Art, Design and Architecture.